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Internet’s over, people. Maurice Sendak just won.
one of the highest compliments.
Posted on May 8, 2012 via amagicshow with 16,118 notes
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Vonnegut on How To Write A Great Story
I love all 8, but #7 especially:
Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
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Don’t be “a writer.” Be writing.
William Faulkner -
It’s tough to associate creativity with mental illness because obviously if you’re very ill, it gets in the way. … But one of the theories now is that the terrible swings of the mental illness – of bipolar depression – you get these manic highs, these euphorias, where the ideas just pour out of you. And you need to write them down. That’s followed by this dismal low period when maybe you’re a better editor. Maybe it’s easier for you to focus and refine those epiphanies into a perfect form. … The thinking is maybe the correlation exists because the swings of mental illness echo the natural swings of the creative process.
Jonah Lehrer, on the link between depression and creativity. [complete interview here] (via nprfreshair) Not entirely sure why, but I really like the bit about being a better editor when you’re in the lowlands.(via nprfreshair)
Posted on March 21, 2012 via NPR Fresh Air with 1,148 notes
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Six Tips on Writing from John Steinbeck- Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page for each day, it helps. Then when it gets finished, you are always surprised.
- Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on. It also interferes with flow and rhythm which can only come from a kind of unconscious association with the material.
- Forget your generalized audience. In the first place, the nameless, faceless audience will scare you to death and in the second place, unlike the theater, it doesn’t exist. In writing, your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person—a real person you know, or an imagined person and write to that one.
- If a scene or a section gets the better of you and you still think you want it—bypass it and go on. When you have finished the whole you can come back to it and then you may find that the reason it gave trouble is because it didn’t belong there.
- Beware of a scene that becomes too dear to you, dearer than the rest. It will usually be found that it is out of drawing.
- If you are using dialogue—say it aloud as you write it. Only then will it have the sound of speech.
(via bravo13)
Posted on March 12, 2012 via this isn't happiness. with 11,475 notes
Source: nevver
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The difference between fiction and nonfiction is that fiction has to make sense.
Tom Clancy -
So often that process is veiled and I understand why, because it’s mystical, it can’t be reduced to a formula, you feel somehow that to talk about it is undignified, kiss-and-tell. But I think not talking about it leads to this weird myth that songs should write themselves, that unless they tumble out in a rush, fully formed, they’re not truly inspired. Which has not been my experience at all. For me the stuff that tumbles out in a rush is usually journal-type ego drivel and it’s the songs I really give a long incubation to that feel more lean and true.
The incredible Anais Mitchell on writing in American Songwriter magazine. Her new album “Young Man In America” is out today, which promises to be a really good follow-up to the ambitious “Hadestown.” -
Henry Miller’s commandments for writing. Pretty rad. I kind of disagree with #1, but that’s probably because I’m generally working in a shorter format (songs, essays, etc) than Miller was.
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[…] there is this existential loneliness in the real world. I don’t know what you’re thinking or what it’s like inside you and you don’t know what it’s like inside me. In fiction I think we can leap over that wall itself in a certain way. But that’s just the first level, because the idea of mental or emotional intimacy with a character is a delusion or a contrivance that’s set up through art by the writer. There’s another level that a piece of fiction is a conversation. There’s a relationship set up between the reader and the writer that’s very strange and very complicated and hard to talk about. A really great piece of fiction for me may or may not take me away and make me forget that I’m sitting in a chair. There’s real commercial stuff can do that, and a riveting plot can do that, but it doesn’t make me feel less lonely.
There’s a kind of Ah-ha! Somebody at least for a moment feels about something or sees something the way that I do. It doesn’t happen all the time. It’s these brief flashes or flames, but I get that sometimes. I feel unalone — intellectually, emotionally, spiritually. I feel human and unalone and that I’m in a deep, significant conversation with another consciousness in fiction and poetry in a way that I don’t with other art.Posted on February 10, 2012 via this isn't a blog. with 46 notes
Source: clementina
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I can hope, I can daydream, but certainly think that the chances of me being read 50 years from now or 100 years from now are probably not good. That cannot be your only end. You cannot write to be immortal because you will never know. It’s impossible. Just write as well as you can and don’t speculate about whether you will be Chaucer or Shakespeare.
Posted on February 9, 2012 via with 120 notes
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